| Page Views |
We've had
26,556,880
page views since January 2004
|
|
| The Archive |
Browse through 1000's of pages in our Archive
|
|
|
|
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Holy Grail |
|
 The Musgrave Ritual - By Sol Aris
 Yesterday was the Birthday of acclaimed detective novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle is most familiar to us today as the creator of the detective Sherlock Holmes, but a lesser known fact about him is that he was also a Scottish Rite Freemason.
He was unarguably a highly intelligent and well-read man, who later in his life turned to mysticism and was head of a Spiritualist movement which lobbied to change England�s old law against witchcraft.
He may�ve been a user of cocaine (due to his favourable references to it in his earlier works) which was legal and socially acceptable back then, and has been described as causing one to make strange mental leaps. All of that together gives us a person who would, either knowingly or subconsciously, incorporate some very interesting symbolism into his stories, infusing the Detective Mystery genre with other Mysteries.
According to a simplified version of Jung�s immortal theory of the Collective Subconscious, all of humanity�s dreams and desires are added to an endless stream of thought which is common to us all. Some sensitive people, notably adepts of the various creative arts, can somehow "connect" to that stream and get ideas and symbols out of it, which they shape into their creations. (What others refer to as "creativity" or "imagination".)
A secret as big and ancient as the "Holy Grail", which countless seekers of strove to find over the centuries or even millennia, would certainly leave a mark on that timeless record. The brilliant trickster Doyle is actually likely to have known much of the Grail lore, as part of his research on the history of the Scottish Rite. But whether he did it purposely or not, this lore found its way into his own tales.
There is a particular Sherlock Holmes adventure which can provide some very revealing information about the history of the Grail in modern times. It is called "The Musgrave Ritual", and it is widely available online, for example here: ;; http://www.4literature.net/Arthur_Conan_Doyle/Musgrave_Ritual .
This short story is by no means an example of Doyle�s finer writing, or of Holmes� more brilliant deductions and better known cases. And it�s plot is far less captivating than some of Doyle�s faster-paced adventures. But it would seem that this was merely a clever tactic adopted by Doyle in order to conceal the real importance of his account, because most readers would usually look no further. Let�s take a good look at what he is telling us here.
Holmes basically sets out to find a missing butler and maid at the mansion of an old aristocratic friend, but ends up finding something entirely different in addition - a buried treasure of King Charles I Stuart (which name is still spelled "Stewart" according to the Scottish King Lists.).
The nature of the treasure is revealed only at the very end of the story, but this is obviously the part which should pique the curiosity of any Grail researcher. Because according to research put forward by such works as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, or "Bloodline of the Holy Grail" by Laurence Gardner, Charles I Stewart is named as the hereditary head of a "secret brotherhood" which was in charge of safeguarding nothing less than the Holy Grail itself. This "Grail" was supposedly hidden somewhere in Scotland, most likely at the Roslyn Chapel, by the remnants of the Knights Templar who fled France during the destruction of their Order by King Philip IV of France in 1307 CE.
The main clue which Holmes has to work with in the story, is an old family ritual of his friend Reginald Musgrave. Nobody in the family knows the meaning of this ritual, but respecting the wishes of their ancestors they had dutifully passed it through many generations of Musgraves, each traditionally teaching it to his male offspring.
Holmes� friend caught his butler one day in the family�s private library surreptitiously studying the old document, shortly before the butler went missing. Holmes understands right away that the ritual in fact deals with the location of some kind of a buried treasure.
Here is the wording of the Musgrave family ritual. It�s presented in the form of a question-and-answer dialogue, familiar as an entry ritual into all secret societies, including Freemasonry and College Fraternities.
�Whose was it?�
�His who is gone.�
�Who shall have it?�
�He who will come.�
�Where was the sun?�
�Over the oak.�
�Where was the shadow?�
�Under the elm.�
�How was it stepped?�
�North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.�
�What shall we give for it?�
�All that is ours.�
�Why should we give it?�
�For the sake of the trust.�
Holmes measures the amount of steps from the ritual on the ground, after performing an intelligent bit of triangulation to determine where a shadow of a rooted-out elm would have fallen when the shadow of the still-standing oak tree on the estate would�ve been at the elm trunk, and proceeds to find both the missing butler and the crypt where the treasure was concealed.
It was hidden on the Musgrave estate by friends of the deposed and executed King Charles the First, who were fleeing the Parliamentary forces of Oliver Cromwell. The exact date is not given, but Musgrave notes that his ancestor was a "prominent Cavalier and right-hand man of Charles the Second in his wanderings". These "wanderings" are known to have taken place after the battle of Worcester in 1651, when the Royalists were defeated in their attempt to help the young son of Charles I gain back the usurped throne, two years after his father was beheaded.
Holmes guesses that Musgrave and other Stuart supporters hid some historically important relics to keep them from being plundered, so that they could be passed onto Charles II when he was restored to power. The hiding place was described in the family ritual. The opening lines, "Whose was it"/"His who is gone" refers to Charles I. The second question and answer "Who shall have it"/"He who will come" refers to the foreseen future coronation of Charles II.
But the original Musgrave who concealed the trove and wrote the ritual, had evidently died in the war before he had time to reveal its secret to his own son. Thus his descendants had no idea of the ritual�s true significance, until it was discovered by Reginald Musgrave�s butler and then by Holmes.
The "treasure" itself, which was hidden in that manner and eventually did not find its way to the son of Charles the First but instead remained rusting under Reginald Musgrave�s house for over two hundred years, was, in Holmes� own words, �nothing less than the ancient Crown of the Kings of England".
As mentioned, we are told this fact only at the very end of the story. The nature of the treasure when revealed turns out to be merely incidental to the larger romantic adventure between the butler and the maid, and in fact it�s quite a disappointment to reach that part, as means very little to any of the heroes in the tale or to the reader.
Yet it would seem that the very unimportance of this treasure in the story plot is used by Doyle to disguise the fact that we�re talking about a vital link in the British Royal Succession, the very Old Crown of England itself. A very important artefact in itself, it is also extremely symbolic - not only of the Power its wearer wields, but also of the sacred Grail guardianship with which the Stewarts were entrusted.
The lost cache belonged to Charles I and it did not reach his son because of the Revolution. But Charles II did in fact eventually assume the British Throne nine years later in 1660, soon after Cromwell�s death - so he did actually inherit "the crown", the Monarchy itself. So which "treasure" of his father did he not get?
This can only mean that Doyle was referring to another kind of succession which was broken here - that of the Stewart Grail Keepers, which was interrupted with the beheading of Charles I so that his sacred charge did not make its preordained way to his eldest son and rightful heir.
The Grail, according to the legends, was deemed much more important to its guardians than ruler ship of the land. Charles II must�ve had a new crown made to replace the "lost" one, and this signifies that some sort of a major change took place in the British Monarchy at that time as well, as from that time on the monarchs wore a "different crown" than before. But the symbolic significance of the Old Crown as the Old Grail cannot be denied.
This is borne out in the last question of the Ritual - "Why do we do it/For the sake of the trust", which words should be written in capital letters as The Trust, thus obviously referencing the object of this ancient Stewartship. Doyle is saying that due to the social and political upheavals brought by the Commonwealth Revolution (as well as the changing religious climate in Scotland), Charles II no longer had the same control of the Grail as his father did, it was not fully passed onto him.
Our notion is borne out in several other features of the story, perhaps most pertinently its very opening words "an anomaly which often struck me". Using a first line which drops a hint to the Intrepid Searcher is an established trick in occult literature. The "anomaly" should make the reader aware that something very unusual will be told. It also refers to the mentioned disappointment at the useless nature of the found treasure - because despite its apparent irrelevance today, this treasure is in actuality a vital symbol for something most important.
The wording of the ritual itself also strongly supports the Broken Grail Succession theory, in Doyle�s choice to use particularly the oak and the elm tree as the starting markers from which to determine the location of the hidden trove. Both trees have traditionally been deeply associated with Grail lore.
The Oak was an ancient symbol of the House of Stewart, and earlier was the symbol of the House of king David from the Bible. The Mediterranean Oak (a slightly different variety from the European one) was the largest shade-giving tree in old Palestine and was justly considered the King of the Trees there. Thus the Oak became a symbol for the Holy Bloodline itself, which bloodline was shown by the above writers and others to have gone from King David to Jesus, and then through the Merovingians in France to the Stewart kings.
"Sun over the Oak" would then be Doyle�s way of telling us that despite the unsuccessfully passed heritage of Charles II, the ancient guardianship of the Grail somehow continued. But like the English Crown in the story, it was hidden away, with the hiding place and its meaning forgotten by subsequent generations. Yet the Old Oak still stands to guide one�s way, as it guided Holmes to make his find.
An interesting aspect of "The Musgrave Ritual", is that by the time Holmes arrived on the scene the elm was already cut down on the Musgrave estate, and Holmes (as did the missing butler before him) had only the place where it stood and its known old height to work with. This did not prevent either of them from performing a geometrical calculation and locating the spot which the shadow of the elm would�ve pointed to at a certain time of day.
The cut-down elm here undoubtedly refers to the famous event in the history of the Knights Templar, known as "the Cutting of the Gisors Elm" ( see for example http://www.crystalinks.com/prieuredesion.html ) This momentous instance ties into the Grail Legend in many more ways than can be readily enumerated in a short article, but basically it signified an ideological split within the Templar Order and the Merovingian Bloodline, and also the split between France and Plantagenet England, (which led to such things as the hundred-year war.)
The Cutting of the Elm took place near the Castle of Gisors in France in the year 1188 CE. That same year the Rosicrucian Order was founded by none other that Jean de Gisors, also founder of the Priory of Sion, the organization said to be in charge of guarding the Grail Bloodline. (See the excellent article by Steven Mizrach at http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/rennes-sion.html)
The word for "elm" in French is "orme", which is related to Ormus, the 1st Century Gnostic who�s considered the "spiritual father" of the Rosicrucians and is also found in some histories of the origins of Modern Freemasonry. Other interesting thoughts about this can be found at the above links.
It is very likely therefore, in light of what we�ve found in this story so far, that "Shadow under the Elm" was Doyle�s way of saying that the traces of that old Templar Split still weigh heavy, like a shadow, over the guardianship of the Grail. But this doesn�t prevent Holmes from solving the puzzle - because after all, the sun is still "over the oak". This is akin to the Biblical expression "the hand is still upraised", meaning that despite the split, the broken succession, the lost treasure, and all the other problems acquired over the years, the old Grail Legacy still stands to be discovered, if one merely looks in the right place.
What one has to do then, presumably, is find the right starting place from which to apply Doyle�s triangulation and step measurements, to find the actual location of the Grail in his day, which he may�ve even known due to his many associations, or had simply guessed. He gives a hint as to the general geographical location in the very last words of the story, which are also very significant, just like the opening ones.
As he�s talking about the missing maid (who, significantly, is the only feature of the story which he failed to physically locate and could only put a logical theory about), Holmes says that "she carried herself and the memory of her crime to some land beyond the seas". This is undoubtedly a reference to the United States, where many sources claim that the Grail itself was carried to. The idea of the Grail in America was well-known in Doyle�s time and was later yet more popularized by people like the mystic Manly Hall.
The "missing woman" would then obviously symbolize the Lost Sacred Feminine, which according to many writers constitutes the nature of the Grail. Like the "treasure" itself, which was buried and lost in the story, this is another very poignant symbol for that broken succession.
The meaning of the second-to-last question of the ritual is not entirely clear at this time - "What shall we give for it/All that is ours". This evidently refers to some sort of self-sacrifice, because "all" would presumably include one�s life as well. Obviously implying the personal sacrifice of people like the Musgrave ancestor in the story, who did give his life in support of his charge; this phrase must also refer to something which Doyle thought was still very pertinent to the Grail in his day and probably in the future.
An additional hint in this story as to the possible modern location of the Grail could be the fictitious location where Doyle places the Musgrave manor - in a town of "Hurlstone" in western Sussex. The name is suggestive of "a stone�s throw", which is a familiar relative measure of distance when describing major landmarks. And though the figures in the Ritual could be interpreted in different ways - for example, "ten and by ten" could refer to multiplication, and not taking ten steps with each foot as Holmes had surmised - Conan Doyle is basically telling us how the measurement should be done, once we find the starting point.
It should be noted that in the film version of this story made in 1986, available today on DVD as "The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 5 - The Musgrave Ritual & The Man with the Twisted Lip" the steps in the ritual are given differently: "West 8 by 8, South 7 by 7, West 6 by 6, South 5 by 5 plus 2 by 2 and then under."
One has to wonder why the film writer Jeremy Paul, who won an Edgar Award for this script, changed the original wording. He may have thought that his new figures carry an additional numerological significance, or perhaps it was meant to hide the numbers given by Doyle for some reason. But perhaps the new sequence simply looked better on film, or happened to be the best fit for the set location. But another interesting coincidence about that DVD is that the hero of the second story on it "The Man with the Twisted Lip" is called "St. Clair" - which name is intimately associated with the Holy Grail, the Templars, and Freemasonry.
Lastly, "the Musgrave Ritual" is considered an unusual Holmes adventure, because it does not involve Dr. Watson in any way - the incident took place when Holmes "was in college" long before he met Watson, and he tells the whole thing to the good doctor in their study, showing him some of the recovered coins from the find. This uncommon feature (although present in a few other Holmes tales) is another pointer at the importance of this otherwise unnoticed story. ;;
The Valley of Fear
To conclude our account, lets take a short look at a much better known Holmes and Watson escapade, which is described in the novel "The Valley of Fear", written by Doyle in 1914, long after the Musgrave Ritual came out in 1893.
This work is also considered an unusual Holmes story, because the entire second half of the novel does not involve Holmes or Watson at all. The scene there is set in an imaginary "Vermissa Valley, Pennsylvania", and describes the earlier American history of the client whose case Holmes was working on in the first half. The complete absence of our usual heroes from the lengthy description makes this novel also stand out on its own among Holmes� more familiar investigations.
Holmes� client client, the hero of the second part of the novel, used to be a Pinkerton agent in the US, where he was an instrument of the Law and brought to justice what we would call today "a protection racket". It was run by the Vermissa Valley chapter of "The Ancient Order of Freemen", supposedly a national organization with a chapter in every major US city. In Vermissa Valley they were called "the Scrowers", and assumed a very sinister role of a violent organized crime ring, who charged "protection-dues" from legitimate businesses, enforcing this policy with mayhem and murder. Doyle takes pains to point out that this is only one renegade lodge of the large organization, the rest of which is law-abiding and philanthropic.
It has been pointed out by many researchers that this description is Doyle�s "thinly veiled" criticism of Freemasonry, not so thinly veiled at all of course. But most likely it carries an additional important message as well.
First, the fact that the action is set in America strengthens our earlier supposition that Doyle believed the "Holy Grail" to have been taken to that land accross the sea - because Freemasons were named by some researchers of his day as the modern Guardians of the Grail. (On the other hand, Doyle may�ve only meant to disassociate the criminal group from home in England, and place them in distant violent America instead.)
Doyle probably wishes to show us here how certain factions of Freemasonry had perverted the Original Precepts for Personal Gain, while trying to fool others that they were only doing it for everyone�s "protection". This idea goes back further than modern Freemasonry to factions of the Templars, who may�ve started doing the same thing before, which gave birth to such legends as Templar "the Key of Solomon" being a book on raising demons.
Doyle is also making an important statement about how members of a "select brotherhood" are forced to do things which may oppose their own personal morality. They dare not go against their brethren in the organization, either out of loyalty or for fear of reprisals. This is an open statement about how the "bad Masons" keep their members in line. The criminal behaviour of the "brethren" could be a reference to some known murders from 19th Century America, which are seen today as having been committed and later covered up by Freemasons - such as the death of Captain William Morgan in 1826.
The moral dilemmas posed by an adherence to the Rules of Brotherhood rather than one�s conscience, is a theme that has been endlessly expounded in subsequent books and films. Doyle was possibly the first to popularize it for a much wider audience - though of course the idea of a band of criminals controlling a frontier town, which we�ve seen in so many Western movies, goes back to the legends of the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin of Locksley.
Lastly, researchers have concluded that Doyle�s "Order of Freemen" is based on a sordid episode of an actual organization named "The Molly Maguires", who had also ended up being a violent ring who subjugated a peaceful working valley to their vices. This group split off from the "Ancient Order of Hibernians", an Irish Catholic society which was set up in the 16th Century to oppose Henry the Eighth�s persecution of Catholicism. (See extensive article at ;; http://mill-valley.freemasonry.biz/marin_hibernians_orangemen_royal_black_knights.htm )
This is an important bit of fact, because "persecution of Catholicism" is considered to be one of the causes of the political upheavals in England and Scotland during the 17th Century, which had led to the execution of Charles I and the physical removal of the Grail from the Stewart charge. Doyle is likely to have been satirizing conflicting factions of Freemasonry seeking to regain control of the Grail.
It would seem then, that Doyle is definitely trying to tell us something with all this symbolism. Whether he was actually privy to information regarding the Grail, or had made a good educated guess about it, which is far more likely, or had merely pulled the whole thing out of the Collective Subconscious - but there is no doubt that in addition to everything else he was famous for, he should also get credit for giving subsequent generations of intrepid searchers a good trail to follow.
Article Submitted by Author Sol Aris
|
Posted on Tuesday, May 23 @ 06:53:56 CDT by THoTH
|
|
|
Associated Categories For further reading
|
|
|
|
|
| No Comments Allowed for Anonymous, please register |
|
|
|
|
Re: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Holy Grail (Score: 1)
by TrentCoole on Friday, July 21 @ 21:49:08 CDT
(User Info | Send a Message | Journal) http://mrtrentcoole.blogspot.com/ | | This a new area to me but an old fellow I boarded with when I was in college in 2002 is really into it big time. He knew every detail from every Sherlock Holmes story in circulation & probably then some. He knew everything about Mr. Doyle as well. I'm an avid book collector & I'd say he has a very extensive library on this topic. When I saw this article fond memories came back. I can't remember ihis full name but his last name is Coffin. Cool hey! |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| Article Rating |
Average Score: 5
Votes: 2
|
|
|
Resources
Audio/Visual
Discussion & Chat
Information
Keep Up To Date
Fun & Games
Submitting
Spread The Word
Rules & Help
Personal
